


An Apology to Seasons 2 and 3

by dire_quail



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Analysis, Christianity, Evangelicalism, Gen, It's been a minute since I've done one of these, Meta, Queer Themes, Religious Discussion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, gay things, she-ra meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26491084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire_quail/pseuds/dire_quail
Summary: Some meta I wrote about Noelle's comment about "focusing on the relationship between Adora and the previous She-Ra".Basically: I appreciate seasons 2 & 3 a lot more than I used to.
Relationships: Adora & Mara (She-Ra)
Kudos: 4





	An Apology to Seasons 2 and 3

### Introduction

I think I owe seasons 2 and 3 of _She-Ra_ an apology. 

It’s not even that I didn’t like them so much as I just… overlooked them, especially once I had season 4, where things finally came to a head with Light Hope and Mara. I kind of thought of seasons 2 & 3 as… their own thing. Part of the show but not the part I was Deeply Excited About. 

And then I listened to the Exit Interviews panels on She-Ra: Progressive of Power. 

In the second panel, Noelle mentioned that the connection between Adora and the previous She-Ra had figured prominently in their mind while they were developing the show. At the time, it stuck out because I was starving for more context around Mara. I filed it away, didn’t think much about it, and moved on. And then I had to watch a couple of episodes for some other meta. 

Friends, I was jawdropped. 

When Noelle talked about "the connection between Adora and the She-Ra before her" on the panel, I was like, "Aha, past lives”. For some reason, when I heard “connection”, I interpreted it as something closer to “affinity”—a gravitation, a bond. It sounded closer to a magical ability, like in _Avatar_ and _Korra_ , or even going all the way back to _Star Wars_. Overall, an empowering experience, that either evidences mastery of their skills or provides crucial insight into themselves, their abilities, or the nature of the conflict around them. 

And it does do some of those things—eventually. 

But it’s so, so much more. 

In the context of the panel, I’d framed “connection” as this sort of… overall positive thing, right? That it made things not just easier, but _possible_ , when they otherwise would’ve been out of options. That is not how Adora’s “connection” to Mara functions in _She-Ra_. 

For Adora, connection to Mara is _fraught_. Connection is implication. It’s a connection that is painful, wrenching—damning, even. It constrains her, binds her to the damage Mara did to Etheria, and to the process of healing. 

It’s also a connection she’s never able to fully make, because of time and distance and the deliberate intervention of other interested parties. 

And at the same time that it’s a source of pain for her, Adora _needs_ their connection, because it contains the context she needs to understand herself, her role as She-Ra, and what’s happening in the world around her. She experiences it as this pull towards direct traces of Mara’s life, and finally towards the signal being broadcast from Mara’s ship. 

But she does so against the advice of essentially everyone in a position to advise her—Light Hope interrupts almost any mention of Mara with “Mara was compromised”, regardless of what Adora is trying to say, for instance. Even Bow’s dads emphatically warn the Best Friends Squad not to go into the Crimson Waste, because it’s so hostile and inhospitable. And the trio ends up concealing their trip into the Waste from the Queen of Bright Moon and leader of the Rebellion for the same reason. But Adora is compelled to seek that connection out. She _knows_ , in spite of her enforced ignorance, that something is waiting for her. 

Thinking about Adora’s connection to Mara was the throughline I’d been missing, connecting all the way from Season 1 to the end of “Heart Part II”.

### In This Essay, I Will…

** Season 1 **

Two things happen here: One, we establish a conceit that’s echoed throughout the rest of the show when Adora, on seeing the damage and pain caused by the Horde, defects, and takes on herself the responsibility of resisting their onslaught—almost as a kind of penance. As it becomes clear that She-Ra’s abilities are not just combative or destructive, but also healing, it becomes clear that Adora’s “penance” isn’t simply defeating the Horde: It’s something closer to a duty of repair. The “Chosen One who will Bring Balance” trope gets played with throughout the series, but its most sincere iteration is early in season 1 when Angella echoes what she’s heard of the myth of She-Ra, who will “return in [their] hour of greatest need to bring balance to Etheria”. Which establishes the theme: Adora defects, and accepts a duty of repair. 

Which brings us to Point Two, which is: Adora doesn’t really know what she’s doing. She lacks connection to or grounding in her past. She’s supposed to heal the planet, but she doesn’t know how to heal. For most of season 1, she sort of makes it up as she goes along, making it through a series of near misses by sheer force of will—until Glimmer is magically injured during her rescue from the Fright Zone. At that point, Adora is forced to look for outside help. And because of the immense gap in time between the present day and the time when She-Ra supposedly walked the planet, the only two characters who she knows might be able to help her are Madame Razz and Light Hope. 

Madame Razz introduces Mara early on. She speaks of her as a dear friend and a heroic, conflicted figure. That introduction of Mara provides fodder for a reversal when Adora decides to seek out Light Hope, the figure who appeared to her when she first touched the Sword. 

Light Hope’s take on things is much more formalized, and fits much more neatly into the tropes viewers are likely familiar with, from the She-Ra “line” of past champions to her assertion that Adora’s role as She-Ra is to “bring balance” to the planet. 

The reversal comes when Light Hope reveals that the Mara Madame Razz spoke fondly of is responsible for doing a huge amount of damage to the planet. She’s the one responsible for stranding Etheria in Despondos and nearly breaking the She-Ra line, robbing Etheria of its champion against the Horde. It’s implied that Mara is the cause of the disappearance of the First Ones. Light Hope asserts that it is Adora’s duty to “be the She-Ra that Mara could not be”. 

There are already indications that Light Hope is not being entirely honest, but Adora lacks the context to suss this out, and is distracted by her worry for Glimmer besides that. Whatever her misgivings, she can’t deny the damage that’s around her—or the fact that she is now She-Ra, and it falls on her to repair the damage done by her predecessor. From that point until probably around the end of season 4, when Mara is vindicated and Etheria restored to the wider universe, Mara and her actions become a kind of shadow or spectral figure that haunts Adora. 

So to recap: Adora takes up the Sword. When she finally manages to make “contact” of a kind with her past via Light Hope, she finds herself bearing the responsibility of repair for Mara’s actions before her—and a picture of the potential consequences if she fails. 

Just like her relationship with the Horde, to be connected to the She-Ra line is to be implicated in the violence done by it, and thus to bear the responsibility for repair. 

And I know the fandom has a lot of Thoughts(TM) about how unhealthy Adora’s tendency to “take responsibility” and be willing to sacrifice herself is, and the parallels to religious trauma and homophobic self-denial have been made ad nauseam, but if I’m being honest… I can’t find much to argue with in that assertion. 

** Season 2 **

A lot of the technical and plot-related stuff in seasons 2 & 3 revolves around the portal, nominally. But the trip into the Crimson Waste isn't just about setting up the portal, and the portal isn't just about Catra's villain turn. Catra's villain turn really only happens once Adora gets her hands on Mara's message—fulfilling the arc of going into the Waste to find what Mara left for her. 

Viewing seasons 2 & 3 through the lens of an emotional/spiritual journey leading up to making “contact” with Mara feels unifying in a way that the focus on the portal and Catra ultimately didn’t live up to—some of the details in the portal arc felt like they were retconned in later seasons, even though what’s shown onscreen wasn’t _technically_ changed or contradicted. 

“Ties That Bind” (2x02) and “Signals” (2x03) in particular serve to hammer in the narrative Light Hope passes down to Adora—that Mara was a destroyer, that she was “compromised”, that she harmed the planet. And, similar to how Adora joined the Rebellion to make a kind of reparation for her previous allegiance to the Horde, Adora must repair the damage caused by Mara. 

Reminders of the destruction Mara visited on the planet literally shape the landscape, whether it’s a malfunctioning communications hub at the heart of a present-day town or the complete obliteration of the Watchtower in “Ties That Bind”. The show takes time to emphasize the stark violence of Mara’s actions ( _”Mara really did a number on this place”_ ) well into season 4. Whatever Razz thought of her Mara, what Adora sees on her travels is undeniable, and it weighs on her heavily. 

S2 serves to cement the undeniable harm that Mara’s actions seem to have caused, the doubt and conflict this causes Adora, and to introduce the message—the idea that there could be more information out there about Mara than what the authority figures around Adora are giving her. 

It’s just in the middle of a lifeless wasteland, and she’ll have to go against not just Light Hope’s wishes, but also Angella’s (ambiguously parental, but definitely an authority figure) and Lance & George’s (parental figures) to do it. Even people who clearly care for her and believe in the value of uncovering more about her self and her past discourage her from going. 

** Season 3 **

Season 3 begins on a sharp reversal for Adora: after facing Shadow Weaver and Light Hope back-to-back attempting to manipulate her in the S3 premiere, Adora strikes out with her friends in search of answers. And her goal? To connect with Mara. In spite of all the warnings of the adults and authority figures around her, in spite of the harm her actions clearly wrought on the planet. 

Adora’s choice to venture into the Waste is about the connection between Adora and Mara, a connection that's almost unbearable for Adora, because "what Mara did" is so awful, so crystal-clear, so sweeping and fundamental. It overshadows everything, every bit of good Adora does as She-Ra. Her connection to Mara makes Adora scared of herself. 

But at the same time, Adora is drawn to Mara. Adora _needs_ her. There's this longing that Adora has, all these huge questions and, when the answers she receives from the people she’s supposed to trust become clearly manipulative, suddenly, maybe even inexplicably, Adora knows that Mara has the answers. Mara—the one responsible for all this pain and destruction, the person she understands as the villain in all this—is the one Adora needs. 

Going into the Waste is an acknowledgement of their connection, which has terrified her. It’s a recognition that they’re connected by more than just She-Ra—like Adora says, they probably came from the same home planet. She’s tried “fixing it”, she’s tried proving how _unlike_ Mara she is. But now that connection, and whatever horrors it has in store for her, is something Adora has to put her trust in, to a degree. 

Like Razz says when she first meets Adora, the two of them are alike, their actions and doubts mirrored across time. 

The end of S3 sees Adora make contact with Mara—even locking eyes in person in the portal reality before Mara is swept into the portal. Cut off: By Light Hope, by the First Ones, by linear time, and finally even the unraveling fabric of time and space itself still will not allow the two of them to make contact. But they come so unbelievably close. 

Connection—abortive, fragmented, incomplete. The more Adora sees of Mara and her actions, the more she knows she needs her. Needs her perspective, needs her knowledge; knows that the answers being withheld from her are part of what connects her _to_ Mara. It’s woven into the fabric of their being. The effects of Mara’s actions ripple across time and shape Adora’s reality inescapably. Against all the evidence she has, Adora is drawn to Mara. 

Connection. Not the affirmation of a successful connection, or the reciprocity and responsiveness of a conversation, or a friendship, or even a magical past-life connection. But the yearning for a connection that isn’t there, that can’t ever be complete, that’s obscured by time and death and intentional obfuscation and erasure. The yearning for a connection denied. 

Aesthetically, the ghostly and violent reminders of Mara’s presence on Etheria, the trek across the Crimson Waste, Mara’s “haunted” ship, the hologram that won’t (that can’t) answer—all come the closest in the entire series to conveying _that_ kind of connection: A haunted and tangled connection, full of gaping silences, complicity, sorrow, and horror. A desperate reach across time in both directions. 

They're able to make enough of a connection that the worst is avoided, and Etheria is healed back into the wider universe. Which, I guess, is hopeful? But the journey through seasons 2 & 3 suggests that looking for healing through that path isn't for the faint of heart.

### I Said I Wasn’t Going to Psychoanalyze You, Noelle, So I’m Psychoanalyzing Myself Instead

There’s a couple reads on this, too, one of which has already been done to death, another that’s alright but not very satisfying, and another one that’s super moving at 4 AM when you haven’t slept for 30 hours, but on revision, seems a bit precarious. 

** One **

The first one goes something like this: It’s not that deep. 

A lot of the negative portrayal of Mara is readily recognizable as manipulation, for genre-savvy folks. Light Hope’s initial assertion that Mara “became unhinged” is a pretty dead giveaway that there’s more going on here—not _just_ because of a general feminist consciousness in the show, either. 

It’s not at all out of place, either in _She-Ra_ generally, which establishes this pattern of Adora being told that one thing is true only to discover she was manipulated by figures who wanted to gain access to her power and skill, or in genre stuff in general. Vindication of a vilified figure is an established narrative turn in a story. 

Not only that, it’s particularly relevant to queer people, who in many cases _have_ to learn to see themselves through a media lens (not to mention religious, educational, and social lenses) that either portray them as outright predatory villains, crazy, or simply pathetic and ugly, tangential, a narrative dead-end as well as a social and evolutionary one. 

This isn’t just about “representation matters”, in the sense of needing unquestionably heroic portrayals of characters like us: It’s about unlearning a whole way of consuming media and actively learning a new way of interpreting information that comes in, compensating for the bias that we _know_ exists in portrayals of queer people. It’s about not believing uncritically what’s presented as The Whole Truth, and that what is portrayed as unimportant, weird, gross, crazy, or antagonistic might look quite different when viewed with different information in hand. 

That information could be a mysterious damaged message on a crashed ship—or the writing, history, and lived experiences of queer people, whose perspectives are systematically marginalized and misrepresented in our media. 

Relating to a queercoded villain isn’t just “I see a queercoded character and identify with them because I’m gay”; it’s the acknowledgment that there is often a haze of intentional misrepresentation there. And beyond it, we think, there’s something that we know: Ourselves, systematically denied to us and portrayed as antagonistic and threatening, even monstruous. 

So that’s one. 

** Two **

The second, kinda-but-not-really satisfying one goes like this: 

Adora’s complicated feelings towards Mara feel very similar to internalized homophobia, the kind of internalized homophobia that even kids with a mostly non-religious upbringing have a familiarity with. 

Almost every gay person I’ve ever met struggles or has struggled with the pain of recognizing themselves in a reviled or derided figure of queerness, whether that's a celebrity or the one out person at school or even the mundane and habitual derision of queer people via stereotyping. 

And in many cases, where they can, those kids (because this starts in childhood and persists well into adulthood) try to purge that person or that stereotype from themselves where they find it. They fear looking in the mirror and seeing that person looking back at them. They develop eating disorders and grow their hair and make extra effort to appear feminine because they don’t want to “look like a stereotypical dyke”. They train themselves to be more masculine so they don’t have their sexuality questioned. But even if they manage to eradicate all outward traces of the thing they fear from themselves—and many people aren’t—those kids and adults often recognize themselves in that figure, and they recognize that figure in other people, too. 

And at the same time, they often feel a pull of some kind towards those qualities, those characteristics. That figure is something they return to, over and over again, often by compulsively distancing themselves from it and other people who remind them of it. As the truism goes, this is still thinking about it, still defining themselves in relation to the thing they’re scared of being. 

And this need/hate relationship between Adora and Mara in _She-Ra_ really mirrors internalized homophobia. It also mirrors Catra’s fraught relationship with her feelings for Adora, which people have focused on to a much greater degree (for obvious reasons). 

This reading is neat, generalizable, and fits into a feel-good affirmative message of You Are Valid And The Christian Church Has Traumatized Lots Of Young People. It doesn’t require much depth of knowledge or belief, because you don’t _have_ to have much depth of knowledge or belief to be affected by it. It’s not just doctrinal, it’s embedded in our society—and often, it has nothing to do with the experience of faith or belief. 

It’s the things you grow up hearing in school. It’s the inexplicable disgust and need to _distance yourself_ you feel as an adult even when you know, intellectually and emotionally, that gender non-conformity and gay identity aren’t necessarily the same, that we shouldn’t devalue members of our community who “fit the stereotype” for reasons of socialization or genetics or preferences in personal presentation. 

That even the idea of “fitting the stereotype” is a toxic idea intentionally introduced to shame and silence queer people, to encourage them to spend more time trying to _avoid being the stereotype_ and gain the approval of gatekeepers than they do advocating for themselves or feeling empathy for each other. It cuts us off from each other.

But while I stand by this reading, it’s not the only one. And, frankly, there’s more to _She-Ra_ than just affirmation and a feel-good message about “connecting to our past”. 

** Three **

I also think there's another layer to the religion here. Beyond just in a broader, nonspecific “religious trauma” sense that makes it easy to vilify the Church wholesale. Not in a way that acts like “rejecting the Church” is a simple proposition. But in a sense that feels oddly, specifically, ex-Evangelical or ex-fundamentalist. _Sincerely_ Evangelical or fundamentalist. 

Because when it comes to removing ourselves from those spaces and systems, as much as we want to “escape”, to disown, to reject—this isn’t a simple imposition from without, where all we have to do is shed the bad ideas and embrace the right ones and everything will be fine. The cycle of “reject-defect-fight for the other side” echoes, in a lot of ways, the deeply fundamentalist Christian assertion that all of life is only ever a battle between God and Satan, and if we reject _their_ understanding of God, by nature we are embracing Satan. 

We might reject a person or denomination’s authority as false, but the cycle of swapping Gods and Devils itself is part of this pattern. 

I’ll use myself as an example. 

For a few years in my teens, I was _deeply_ Christian, of the Evangelical variety. I actually converted a few years _after_ I came out, and yes, there was a certain amount of shame and self-loathing in that, although that wasn’t the _only_ thing driving it. 

That faith was something of a barrier to me connecting to other queer people, who never seemed to struggle the way I did with valuing my faith so highly versus… I was never sure what, honestly. A social label? A particular behavior? There never seemed to be a real equivalence between the two, and the automatic equation of sincere faith with bigotry was alienating. Even now, understanding the kind of genocidal violence the Church is implicated in, the reason I ultimately left wasn’t because I defected to some kind of Rebellion—it was because I wanted to end the cycle of swapping Gods and Devils. And I understood that I would never be able to do that in a place that constantly spoke to me in terms that appealed to me on a level so profound it’s hard to express to someone who’s never felt the same way. 

While the doctrine I internalized _was_ in line with right-wing Evangelicalism, my practice was not. It was never enough to read a single verse in the NKJV or whatever about how God said being gay is bad—I wanted to understand. I _had_ to understand. To this day I have no other insight as to _why_ except that, on some level, I knew this was me, and I didn’t hate it, and I needed to understand why I should bear the cost of restraining something so fundamentally a part of who I am. Sure, you could frame it as me looking for permission—and I’m sure some will do that out of hand. 

But when the cost of repression is so undeniably high—and it is—you need a damn good reason to pay that price. 

And, if we’re being real, their trump card was the same tired one they always use: Because your eternal soul depends on it. Because if you don’t do what God says without question, you’ve failed as a Christian. Read the Bible—but only the way we tell you to. And if you’re left wanting, that’s because there’s something wrong with you—or worse, it’s Temptation(TM). Of course you’re left wanting—you’re sinful, and fallen, and whatever other words they used.

But admonishments to have “faith like a child” were never going to work, especially not after I understood the Church’s history of withholding understanding of the Bible and the process of its creation from laypeople, and the very real and human and not-at-all godly politics that the Church pushed forward under the guise of “Christian faith”. Admonishments to have “faith like a child” will never fully permanently satisfy someone who understands that the Church fundamentally doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as “gay children” or “trans children”—that sees homosexuality or gender nonconformity as an aberration that only adults possess, that view it as inherently and entirely sexual when in fact it’s a whole lens of your being that affects how you experience everything: Your ideals, your aspirations, the people you’re drawn to. 

Which brings us back to “what the fuck does this have to do with Adora, I didn’t sign up for a goddamn confessional”. 

It has to do with Adora because I _recognize_ that avoidant but undeniable connection, that _pull_. It goes beyond stereotypes because it scares you not just with its suggestion of social failure and rejection, which the Evangelical church took pains to teach us to ignore in the right circumstances, but with its supposed implications for your _soul_. 

It goes beyond all appearances to how you experience desire itself, this essential facet of what makes life meaningful and moving and even beautiful for you—spiritually and morally, not just at the level of surface aesthetics and pleasure—and this agonizing dance between wanting it to _be fixed_ and at the same time, wanting to be allowed to connect with it. Always, always feeling it. 

To be haunted by it. How, even if you _did_ have “faith like a child” and you _did_ deny yourself, it would always follow you, the “thorn in your skin”, and you’d always be shadowed by the threat of unraveling and falling into it. How even if you managed to erase any trace of it from the polished surface, it was _inside_ you, tangled up in you. You would always feel a pull, a spark, a recognition, even if you never acted on it. The deep-rooted Evangelical sense that if you stray even the slightest, if you were to even look at it, it would get its hold on you, and you would be dragged off The Path. 

I know the metaphorical steps of Adora’s journey so well, not because I’m genre-savvy but because _they’re mine, too_. 

The pull. The beacon of it. The draw, even though the authority figures tell you that you know all you need to know and going there isn’t just dangerous, it amounts to a failure or desertion of your responsibility as a Christian soldier. But _having_ to go all the same. Knowing that there’s something there, waiting for you, if you can only find it. 

The need to see for yourself, with your own eyes, when you realize you can't live on the crumbs of "truth" that people in authority, the "good shepherds", are feeding you. That they benefit directly from instilling this shame in you, because shame makes you malleable and obedient, and your desire to become better and to repair yourself and the world can be directed if they gain your obedience. 

Going into the desert as a dual metaphor for the supremely lesbian witchy "shadow work" of finding and confronting all the painful and difficult parts of yourself—but also that whole "40 days and 40 nights" idea that the Church ingrains in you, that soul-searching that really only happens when you genuinely care, when you Believe™️. 

Because the answer only matters if you really believe. 

And maybe that fear of unraveling and destruction is well-placed. Because that shadowy thing you're longing to touch—they told you it would destroy you, destroy everything, and in a way, they were right. 

Because when you reached out and you touched that shadow, the core of what they taught you didn't survive contact with it. Because the core of what they taught you was a lie. 

And the world churns on around you while you agonize and search. People make plans and make good on them. You can’t always understand why people around you don’t care about this the way you do. And maybe you could have lived your whole life without knowing for sure. 

But that pull would’ve always been there. That connection would always have been a part of not just who you are, but _what_ you are, woven into you down to individual cells. 

And that’s why you had to go.


End file.
